236 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 59. the women, young and old, married and unmarried, and after two days and two nights of unrestrained brutality, went off 'with the spoil of three hundred chests and coffers/ * Carew, knowing Elizabeth's regard for the House of Ormond, was for the moment afraid to retaliate, and meanwhile the Munster clans caught fire ; MacCarty More, James Fitzmaurice the Earl of Desmond's brother, and. the Southwestern chiefs, held a meeting in Kerry, and determined to use the oppor- tunity of the quarrel between the Butlers and the English for a common rising to save themselves from the impending destruction. To them the struggle was for their lands and lives, and as the colonization scheme leaked out, it became easy, with such a cause, to unite all Ireland against the invaders. The religious cry and the land cry fell in together. The land was the rallying ground among themselves : religion gave them a claim on the sympathy and the assistance of the Catholic Powers. A Catholic rebellion was known to be impending in England, and the King of Spain was supposed to be secretly encouraging the disaffection there. The cause was the same in the two countries, and the chiefs concluded naturally that Philip would prefer the easier enterprise of an Irish conquest, which he might hope to maintain, to the political perplexities in which he would involve himself by placing Mary Stuart on the throne of Elizabeth. They determined therefore to offer the Irish crown to any prince of Terellaugh Mac Breeue Ardye to Cecil : KSS. Ireland.
